Electronic data acquisition forms in construction management

Effective management of construction projects depends on good access to and control of data, especially data pertaining to cost and schedule control functions. However, the proper design and development of automated mechanisms have not had the facility to acquire and store quality data in a timely manner. The purpose of this paper, then, is to discuss a prototype, automated data acquisition system that was developed to support an integrated project management system. The data acquisition system is composed of an integrated set of electronic forms used in conjunction with a bar coding data-entry tool.     

A knowledge-based system for sensor selection

This paper presents a Knowledge-based system (KBS) developed to allow users, who may not be knowledgeable about sensors, to select sensors suitable for their specific needs. The KBS runs on a micro-computer. The selection criteria are user specified and are based on the desired measurement parameters. The system output includes all of the operational and dimensional parameters of the recommended sensor, price, and vendor information.     

Electroplating of nickel-cadmium alloys from alkaline solutions

The electroplating of Ni-Cd alloy coatings was carried out from alkaline baths (pH 10). For comparison, electroplating of the parent metals, Ni and Cd, was performed individually under the same conditions. The cathodic current efficiency for codeposition was high and decreased with increasing current density. The codeposition process is an anomalous type of plating with Cd being the preferentially deposited metal. The Ni content in the deposits increased with increasing current density. This increase in Ni content improves the corrosion resistance and microhardness of the deposits. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the deposits consist of a mixture of Ni, β, γ, γ¹ phases.     

Design of a printed log‐periodic dipole array antenna with high gain for millimeter‐wave applications

In this article, a V‐band printed log‐periodic dipole array (PLPDA) antenna with high gain is proposed. The antenna prototype is designed, simulated, fabricated, and tested. Simulation results show that this antenna can operate from 42 to 82 GHz with a fractional impedance bandwidth of 64.5% covering the whole V‐band (50–75 GHz). The antenna has a measured impedance matching bandwidth that starts from 42 to beyond 65 GHz with good agreement between the experimental and simulated results. At 50 and 65 GHz, the antenna has a measured gain of 10.45 and 10.28 dBi, respectively, with a gain variation of 2.6 dBi across the measured frequency range. The antenna prototype exhibits also stable radiation patterns over the operating band. It achieves side‐lobe suppression better than 17.26 dB in the H‐plane and better than 8.95 dB in the E‐plane, respectively. In addition, the cross‐polarization component is 18.5 dB lower than the copolarization with front‐to‐back ratio lower than 24.1 dB in both E‐ and H‐planes across the desired frequency range. Based on a comparison of performance among the reported work in the literature, we can say that the proposed PLPDA antenna is a proper candidate to be used in many applications at V‐band frequency. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:185–193, 2015.     

Design of a compact dual‐band folded‐waveguide bandpass filter using multilayer waveguide resonators

A novel compact dual‐band bandpass filter based on multilayer folded‐waveguide (FWG) structure is presented in this article.In this design, slots are used to realize direct coupling between adjacent resonators and apertures are adopted to implement cross coupling between non‐adjacent resonators.A new technique of external quality factor of FWG resonator and coupling coefficients between different resonators are studied using full‐wave simulator. In order to demonstrate the proposed technique, a four‐pole dual‐band bandpass filter is designed, fabricated and measured using vector network analyzer. Measurement results which are well agreed with simulation results are presented. Moreover, four‐pole substrate integrated folded waveguide SIFW dual‐band bandpass filter, using two layers of slotted folded waveguide resonators, is demonstrated. The proposed filter has a compact size and it is excellent candidate for the application of wireless communication systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:780–788, 2015.     

Investigating the effect of varying block size on power and energy consumption of GPU kernels

The Journal of Supercomputing - Power consumption is likely to remain a significant concern for exascale performance in the foreseeable future. In addition, graphics processing units (GPUs) have...     

Fine-Grained Multivariate Time Series Anomaly Detection in IoT

Sensors produce a large amount of multivariate time series data to record the states of Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Multivariate time series timestamp anomaly detection (TSAD) can identify timestamps of attacks and malfunctions. However, it is necessary to determine which sensor or indicator is abnormal to facilitate a more detailed diagnosis, a process referred to as fine-grained anomaly detection (FGAD). Although further FGAD can be extended based on TSAD methods, existing works do not provide a quantitative evaluation, and the performance is unknown. Therefore, to tackle the FGAD problem, this paper first verifies that the TSAD methods achieve low performance when applied to the FGAD task directly because of the excessive fusion of features and the ignoring of the relationship’s dynamic changes between indicators. Accordingly, this paper proposes a multivariate time series fine-grained anomaly detection (MFGAD) framework. To avoid excessive fusion of features, MFGAD constructs two sub-models to independently identify the abnormal timestamp and abnormal indicator instead of a single model and then combines the two kinds of abnormal results to detect the fine-grained anomaly. Based on this framework, an algorithm based on Graph Attention Neural Network (GAT) and Attention Convolutional Long-Short Term Memory (A-ConvLSTM) is proposed, in which GAT learns temporal features of multiple indicators to detect abnormal timestamps and A-ConvLSTM captures the dynamic relationship between indicators to identify abnormal indicators. Extensive simulations on a real-world dataset demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve a higher F1 score and hit rate than the extension of existing TSAD methods with the benefit of two independent sub-models for timestamp and indicator detection.     

On the ideal convergence of double sequences in intuitionistic fuzzy normed spaces

Recently, the concept of statistical convergence of double sequences has been studied in intuitionistic fuzzy normed spaces by Mursaleen and Mohiuddine [Statistical convergence of double sequences in intuitionistic fuzzy normed spaces, Chaos, Solitons Fractals, 41 (2009) pp. 2414–2421]. We know that ideal convergence is more general than statistical convergence for single or double sequences. This has motivated us to study the ideal convergence of double sequences in a more general setting. That is, in this paper, we study the concept of ideal convergence and ideal Cauchy for double sequences in intuitionistic fuzzy normed spaces.     

Adaptive device-to-device communication using Wi-Fi Direct in smart cities

Wi-Fi Direct has become vastly popular in the last few years. Due to its fast network setup and the provision of high transmission rates, it is expected to be the piggyback technology for high speed device-to-device communications in smart cities. The increasing demand on Wi-Fi Direct networks and its co-location in the same band with other Wi-Fi ad-hoc and infrastructure networks have entailed the need for developing new adaptive techniques to utilize the wireless spectrum efficiently. In this paper, we introduce, analyze and implement a self-organizing algorithm designed specifically for pop-up Wi-Fi Direct networks. The algorithm dynamically changes the operating channels of pop-up Wi-Fi Direct networks according to their performance in a non-cooperative manner. It utilizes the spectrum efficiently, reduces congestion and enhances performance. Moreover, the modified Wi-Fi Direct network running the proposed algorithm is interoperable with all other Wi-Fi network modes and setups and does not affect their functionalities. On the contrary, it enhances their performance implicitly. We implement the algorithm using the driver of RTL8188CUS chipset in a Linux environment and conduct experiments to evaluate its performance. The obtained results illustrate the benefits of using the proposed algorithm.